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Thursday, 5 April 2012

Mixed Granary Bread

I wanted a quick(ish) everyday loaf, predominantly based on white flour, yeasted and with a little interest added in the way of a proportion of granary flour. This is what I came up with. I'm not sure why I bought the potato flour but I thought I'd add a bit here and see what it did to my loaf, as adding cornflour (in combination with other ingredients admittedly) creates a very soft crumb, adding milk makes the crust colour and the crumb softer, so I was interested to see what potato flour does.

Method
- Combine the flours, salt and yeast. I used my danish dough whisk for this.
- Add the water and whisk this in. You will have a wettish, sticky dough. Leave for 10 mins or so.
- Knead briefly (30s-1min) using oil on your surface and hands to prevent the dough sticking.
- Leave for a while (10mins, 20 mins, not too important). Knead again briefly.
- Leave for a bit longer (probably about 20 mins)
- Dough looked very active so now was a good time to shape. I made a stubby sort of loaf shape.
- Leave in a warm-ish place to allow to increase in size.
- Preheat the oven to Gas 7/220C.
- Bake for 12 minutes at Gas 7 then reduce the heat to Gas 6/200C and continue to cook for a further 25 minutes, turn upside down and leave for 10 min more.
- Remove and allow to cool on a wire rack.

For the second proove, I only had to give this loaf about 35 minutes - yeast was very active, perhaps I'd put a little more in than usual, perhaps my yeast loves granary flour, I don't know. I think I picked almost the right time to bake - the slashes opened up beautifully. It could perhaps have been prooved a little longer though, there is some ripping around the base of the loaf (see picture above). It makes a change from my usual mistake of leaving the loaf for far too long, and then being disappointed that there is no oven spring!

The pictures don't seem to show the granary nature of the loaf - I promise it is in there! This was a very good loaf - an everyday loaf with a slightly chewy rather than crispy crunchy crust and a soft interior. I'm not sure what, if anything, the potato flour added to the loaf. I wonder if it made the crust chewy rather than crispy, but I'm not sure. Quite a bit of potato flour to use up now though!

7 comments:

yum yum! i've not been brave enough to experiment too much with other flours yet...but recently i've been reading about adding potato to breads so potato flour must add the same starches? i dunno...as long as it tastes good it doesn't matter!

Beautiful loaf, Caroline! I like baking with potato flour, it gives a lightness to recipes that I find very appealing. Jacques Pepin often uses it as a thickener for his savoury dishes, and you might also like the chocolate sables recipe on my blog - it's on the Cakes and Cookies page and it uses a cup of potato flour.

I wish I could slash bread like you do - it looks wonderful! I am interested in the potato flour - Nigella waxes lyrical in her domestic goddess book about potato and potato water in bread so I wonder if potato flour has a similar effect